


Hands

by caradoxing (saunteredvaguelydownward)



Series: Dala Brosca [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: actually no save my tiny dwarf child instead, i have fallen into dragon age oc hell please save me, she needs it tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:37:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3793558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunteredvaguelydownward/pseuds/caradoxing





	Hands

For dwarves, hands are most valuable part of one's body. Smiths need their hands to make steel sing, warriors their swords to swing, merchants to run along smooth silk they’ll sell at twice the price, and even nobles with theirs covered in ink blotches from their latest diplomatic endeavor. For Dala Brosca, though, hands only ever meant one thing: danger. Hands were what groped you on walks through Dust Town, what her mother used to grip the nearest object before sending it sailing over her head, what picked off of you what little you had. Every hand print was as much a signifier of her status as property as her tattoos were a signifier of her caste.

She is five years old when her father crosses the wrong man. She does not remember much of him. Small fragments of memories, once in a while. Dark hair and light eyes, like hers and so different from her mother and Rica’s. Hands like hers too; small, perfect for subtler jobs, but warm like the fires. She wonders if she truly inherited all that her father was and left all her mother’s sorrow to burden her sister.

She wants to apologize for this but somehow she figures Rica already knows.

She is nine years old when she learns that the company her sister keeps with men is more than just comforting the sad and lonely with stories and song. Or less than, perhaps.

She is nine years old and she is heartbroken.

She is ten years old and she is heartbroken.

She is eleven years old and her heart never seems to stop breaking.

Her sister only becomes more somber as the years pass. Dala never forgives herself for not being able to fix it.

She is twenty when a surfacer comes, older and kinder than every man that passed her with disgust when walking through the damned corridors of Orzammar. Even after she reminds him of her place, slowly and bitterly, he smiles at her, speaks to her like an equal. She wonders what sort of joke this is, but never quite grasps the punchline. She resolves to become a Grey Warden then and there.

When she reaches the surface, the sky is clear but grey. Duncan notes that it is the same colour as her eyes. She once heard her mother say, deep in a stupor, that she had thought about going above ground when she had Rica. She heard her mother wonder sometimes if that had meant her father was born to be a surfacer. She heard her mother often yell that she wished Dala would just go already and fall into the damned sky if she was so eager to leave. Even years after first coming, Dala still wonders if that would be such a terrible fate.

Before the battle begins, Duncan rests a hand on her shoulder; it is small and it is warm.

She wonders if she is always doomed to lose what little she had to begin with.


End file.
